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Against common sense, I decided to run XP SP2 betas from MS. It's actually looking quite good.

This is the first window you see (well, imagine a full screen version of this) when starting up after installing it:



As you can see it detects your automatic update settings, windows firewall settings, as well as detects 3rd party antivirus settings. I haven't actually tested this yet since I don't run AVG constantly (edit: just ran AVG and looked in the security center, didn't seem to detect it.), nor do I feel the need for a firewall since I'm already behind a router, but the big red things should be enough to scare most people into letting MS set higher security default settings.



The built in firewall seems to have gotten a makeover too. You can turn on exceptions by application, or by port number. Also notice that MS is gearing more towards laptop/mobile users with the 'don't allow any exceptions' box. Of course MS processes are enabled automatically if you have the option itself enabled, such as remote desktop, netmeeting, and so on. It also seems that File and Printer Sharing and UPnP are disabled by default, which is a good thing.



Here's the thing that makes the most amount of difference to me. The IE6 popup blocker. It actually works really well, blocking every popup on this page: http://www.popuptest.com/ except for the ones that don't open a new window (overlays of some sort which I guess aren't technically popups). It also has the option to disallow popups even if you click on them, as well as allow popups from specific sites and show blocked popups. All of those options are available if you click on either the bar or the icon on the status bar. Of course you can disable the top bar if you were so inclined. I can understand why the bar would be there, though, as the status bar is turned off by default IIRC.

My laptop isn't on right now, or I'd show you the new windows wifi setting. It now allows you to connect to unsecured wireless networks (like my one at home) without having to click the little button that says "allow me to connect even though it's not secured" (I personally just do MAC filtering and turn off SSID broadcasting. WEP doesn't seem worth it to me.) It also comes with a different taskbar icon and new window that shows all available wireless networks and their settings.

And network setup wizard has a new icon, but I don't know why.

Windows update got a new look as well, complete with a 'turn on automatic updates' button and snazzier window effects.

Good post Tet. For the vast numbers of people who don't have a clue about firewalls and AV software, this should get them started in the right direction.
Of course the question to me is...if you all ready have all these protections, what is the advantage of sp2?

Yuck.

I'd almost forgotten how butt-ugly the Classic theme was...

Admiral LSD wrote:Yuck.

I'd almost forgotten how butt-ugly the Classic theme was...

no kidding, i like my but bright colors and my classic start menu

woodchip wrote:Of course the question to me is...if you all ready have all these protections, what is the advantage of sp2?

On the back end side of things, SP2 promises to provide lots more protection against buffer overflows, possibly leading to fewer exploits to worry about.

Admiral LSD wrote:I'd almost forgotten how butt-ugly the Classic theme was...

How odd, I feel that way about anything but the Classic theme.

BTW, I'm glad to say that Mozilla FireFox passed the popuptest site with flying colors

so when is sp2 due? is it actually out now?

I don't think it has an official release date. When it's done is probably course for the road.

And since I'm on my laptop.



Although I'm on a wireless connection right now, so I don't know why it's not showing any networks... oh well.

Well, looks like for those of us that know what the hell we are doing, for the most part, SP2 doesn't offer anything other then better Windows security.

Which is kind of sad because all the security risks could have been addressed and released via Windows Update in the time it has taken us to wait for SP2 to get released as one big package. YaY &

Tyranny wrote:Well, looks like for those of us that know what the hell we are doing, for the most part, SP2 doesn't offer anything other then better Windows security.

It does improve security (and the masses I'm sure don't know what the hell they're doing), but it also provides the much needed IE6 popup blocker feature, as well as some additional features in the firewall, Outlook Express

Which is kind of sad because all the security risks could have been addressed and released via Windows Update in the time it has taken us to wait for SP2 to get released as one big package. YaY &

Not really. The security updates are sort of plugging holes. SP2 is like another whole boat. They recompiled a bunch of stuff with their new backend tech to find buffer overflows better.

Well anyway, what were you expecting? A bunch of new features? This is a very large step in the right direction for MS operating systems, as far as security and the masses are concerned. I'm all for it.

Warlock wrote:no kidding, i like my but bright colors and my classic start menu

same here, plus it displays all available items, XP Themes sometimes hide needed items

Well yeah I was kind of hoping for new and interesting features for SP2. Plugging the security holes is great and all and better improvements to the performance of the operating system is very much welcome but...

Dunno...popups aren't an issue with Mozilla and haven't been for a LONG time. Outlook Express will never be as good as Mozilla Mail or Eudora until they finally put in pre-defined spam filtering. The user specified filter is a complete joke, especially these days with all the funky charactered and blank spam mails being sent out.

IE6 still doesn't allow full skinning unless you're using an outside source to impliment XP themes or using the method MD and others have mentioned about doing something that forces the shell to accept outside themes and stuff. This is something that Mozilla and it's experimental sibling line of browsers have been doing for some time.

The only thing IE6 does better then Mozilla 1.6 for me is render the correct framerate on animated gifs. They're slower in Mozilla for some reason and not as fluent in motion.

You're right though, this is technically about the same as when they released the last SP for Win2K, so I shouldn't have really expected anything other then a huge OS security flaws fix.

Well I won't argue with you about OLE. But as far as skinning is concerned, there's a very good reason for that. Part of having a good UI is being consistent. If you have the same buttons everywhere, especially cross application, it makes it easier for the end user. But whatever.

Tetrad wrote:Although I'm on a wireless connection right now, so I don't know why it's not showing any networks... oh well.

It does that to me, but I've had to disable Wireless Zero Configuration so my wireless connection doesn't freak out on me when I try to print or do large file transfers, and as a side effect it appears that I can no longer hide my SSID (which MS says isn't a valid method of securing your network ).

Look's good to me! And /me loves his classic theme!

Purple and dark grey is no "classic theme" as far as I'm concerned!

BTW, I was running some SP2 beta before I reformatted. Something that hasn't been touched on much yet is Windows Update v5. It's basically v4 except it looks different and requires you to enable some of those services you've disabled.

I'm happy it comes with virus protection. After I graduate, the college license won't be valid anymore.

Kyouryuu wrote:I'm happy it comes with virus protection. After I graduate, the college license won't be valid anymore.

Actually, it looks like it just detects any antivirus programs on your computer, so it'll have a big nasty red failure notice for those who don't have any.

Right now it does at least. The conspiracy theorists on Slashdot were quick to point out that MS bought an antivirus company based overseas not too long ago, so it may be a new feature. But it's not in this version at least.

I'd test it out but I don't have any other than AVG, and it doesn't seem to work for that.

heh, didn't MS include a virus scanner way back in the dark days of DOS 6.0-6.2? I suppose now ith the Internet and Windows Update they can make a better go if it since it'll be a hell of a lot eaasier to kep up to date (originally you had to send a coupon found in the manual away to receive a disk with def updates on it).

Plebeian wrote: Actually, it looks like it just detects any antivirus programs on your computer, so it'll have a big nasty red failure notice for those who don't have any.

Meh. Lame.

Tetrad wrote:Right now it does at least. The conspiracy theorists on Slashdot were quick to point out that MS bought an antivirus company based overseas not too long ago, so it may be a new feature. But it's not in this version at least.

I'd test it out but I don't have any other than AVG, and it doesn't seem to work for that.

Maybe it'll actually just detect the not-yet-existing MS VirusWare 2005 program? Act as one big ad, and make people freak out that their virus software must somehow not be good enough.

Well right now when you click the "recommendations" box under antivirus it says. "PLACEHOLDER: This recommendation text is not ready yet.", so I don't see that as not being a possibility.

RC1 came out today apparently. In it are a new windows firewall icon, new graphics on the internal windows update feature under system properties (it looks a lot like the windows firewall graphics), and removed the placeholder text under the recommendations box in the antivirus part of the security center in lieu of this link.

This has been going around:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodte ... predl.mspx

Jeff, you make it sound like it was some sort of worm or something.